On the periphery of metropolitan Istanbul is a dilapidated zoo located within in
otherwise pastoral municipal park. Started in the 1980's this project, similar to many
other public commissions on the edge of the city, remains incomplete, abandoned. Much
of the architecture in the outlying areas of Istanbul is similar, empty cast-concrete
shells thrown up in the anticipation of an urban sprawl yet to come. Driving along the
highways, one sees these structures, many of which will never be occupied by their
intended tenants. They currently function only as monuments to a sort of tragic
optimism, a lost cause of expansion, an emblem of coaxed development into suburbia.

Empty zoo shells sometimes house transients, but the string of pavilions and plains of
the park are, for the most part, under the exclusive rule of feral dogs. Designed for
the domestication and exhibition of the wild and exotic, a holdover from a romantic 19th
century idea of naturalism, if not tourism, these abbreviated showcase environments have
been overtaken by animals once domesticated, now wild and subsequently territorial: Corey
McCorkle's project at maccarone lies where this former ideal meets our current century's
urban entropy, which operates on a course from construction to neglect to metamorphosis.
It begins at the point the zoo meets its political end - the decommission.

McCorkle's photographic and sculptural installations document these new ruins of
urban planning beside the implosion of both nature and culture's milieu, not swaying
far from the artist's past investigations of anomalous forgotten space and the
dysfunctions therein. A video work similarly captures how the zoo pavilions,
intended for entertainment and consumption, have collapsed from supposed civil
program to architectural folly for the wild, liberated, and sometimes hostile.

If the cage is no longer a veil of tactful decorum, McCorkle's use of the kilim
shifts the documentary to the decorative. As a great mediator between domestic
comfort and civic assembly, the material is an emblem of Istanbul's history,
garlanded with emporium and its longstanding reputation as an "East/West" depot.
A mirrored hallway echoes the absurdity of attempting to contain an infinite nature,
collapsing transitional and terminal space.

McCorkle's recently solo exhibitions include Kunsthalle Bern, Switzerland;
MC, Los Angeles; Objectif, Antwerp. The artist's work is concurrently on view
The Kitchen, NY and Stella Louhaus, Antwerp. A film commission regarding
Le Corbusier's Tower of Shadows will be screened in May at The Office of
Contemporary Art, Oslo, Norway and New York.